A Dog’s Life

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The angst of Wally Conron is not quite on the scale of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the Manhattan Project and who then feared the consequences that his brilliance had let loose on the world. Compared to the atom bomb, the hypoallergenic labradoodle might seem comical but, as Mr Conron, the dog breeder who created it, says: “I’ve done a lot of damage.”

When Mr Conron, the puppy-breeding manager at the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia, first produced a cross-breed between a labrador retriever and a standard poodle, he had no idea that he was unleashing the